Keeling Letters and Recollections (ALLEN AND UNWIN) is a book that will perhaps rouse varied emotions in those who read it. Regret there will be for so much youth and intellectual vigour sacrificed; admiration for courage and for a patriotism that circumstances made by no means the simple matter of conviction that it has been for most; and vehement opposition to many of the views (on the War especially) held by the subject of the memoir. By sympathy and environment KEELING was, to begin with, a wholehearted admirer of Germany. Strangely, in one of his social views, he carried this admiration even to the extent of advocating a Teutonic control that should include Holland. To such a mind the outbreak of war with Germany may well have seemed the last horror. But he admitted no choice. Within a few days he was a private soldier; he was killed, as sergeant-major, while bombing a trench on August 18, 1916. The spirit in which he entered the War is shown in an extract from a letter: "What we have got to do in the interest of Europe is to fight Germany without passion, with respect." How grimly those last two words sound now! Through everything KEELING held with a generous obstinacy to his original prejudices. Germany remained most tragically his second fatherland. Somewhere he writes, "I expect I shall be a stronger Pacifist after the war than any of the people who are Pacifists now. But I don't feel one will have earned the right to be one unless one has gone in with the rest." The italics are mine. Before a vindication so unanswerable criticism has no further word to say.
Extract from collected works, of Viscount HALDANE OF CLOAN, O.M., K.T., Op. 3001, Minister of Reconstruction. Report of the Machinery of Government Committee (Cd. 9230), par. 12:—
"We have come to the conclusion, after surveying what came before us, that in the sphere of civil government the duty of investigation and thought, as preliminary to action, might with great advantage be more definitely recognised."
"That's the stuff to give 'em."
"Every boy in the street knows that all component factors in Jugo-Slav countries have proclaimed the union of Jugo-Slavia under the sceptre of the Karagorgjevic dynasty, and that the jurisdiction of the new Jugo-Slav Government extends over Belgrade and Nish, as well as over Zagreb, Sarajevo, Spljet, or Ljubljana."—Letter to "Manchester Guardian."
Then why all this talk about the necessity of higher education!
